


the whirling world stands still

by turnipseller



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Amélie References, i am an incredibly specific kind of person dot jpeg, lovers in a dream, rimbaud/verlaine parallels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-04-23 04:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19143772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnipseller/pseuds/turnipseller
Summary: richard is visited, unexpectedly, in a dream(post-ending tsh speculative)





	1. Chapter 1

The mechanism is still revolving when I return. The men have cleared the room, however, taking their hushed conversation and low-hanging fog of tobacco smoke with them. I try to think back to the last time I was here; was it five years ago? Six? _Maybe they're all dead now_ , I speculate, before realizing the full extent of this thought's stupidity.

I watch listlessly as the monuments on the pedestal circle past, waiting, but not quite knowing what for. Le Mont Saint-Michel. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. Wat Rong Khun, its outstretched hands threatening to drag me to where they are, wherever that is.

When the Pantheon appears, I hear the click of a heel behind me and softly remember, _oh yeah, that's what for_. I turn, and he's there, the brute - a monument in himself, all six-feet-and-five of him. He looks tired, possibly wine-rumpled. Here, he doesn't bother to press his shirts, or to cover his scar. I look to it for confirmation that yes, it's really him. It glowers at me, angrier than I remember it being, but no less familiar; a familiarity which is made tender with sorrow. I gaze into it and become tender, too.

"So," he says, brushing his hair across his forehead with thinly veiled irritation. _My eyes are down here_ , says the gesture. "You're back."

If I'd had any hopes for a grand heartfelt reunion, they would have taken a leap headfirst out the window. I could detect no pleasure on his face at seeing me, nor ignore his annoyance (though he attempted, in his way, to hide it) at my having interrupted whatever far more interesting pursuit in which he'd been previously engaged - translating the Iliad into Cantonese? Contemplating his stance on the return of the Elgin Marbles, and the strategies he would use to defend this position in logical debate? Luckily, I know better than to expect anything of him, excepting the unexpected.

"Hi, Henry," I falter, distracted, still soaking in his presence. That wise, commanding, intoxicating aura typically reserved for demigods and tenure-track professors. I thought I could drown in it, if I wasn't careful, or if I so desired. "How've you been?"

He doesn't reply, but his face does soften. Slowly, he steps closer and closer until the tip of my nose almost collides with the placket of his button-down. Then, with uncharacteristic gentleness, he places a great big hand on my head. Narrowing his eyes at me, glasses slipping down his nose, he asks quizzically - "Have you grown?"

"I don't think that's possible," I say. I am, as it so happens, hideously old.

"Anything's possible," he replies with disdain. _You only believe in things when you can see them, Papen, that's your problem._ He hasn't aged a day since I last saw him, of course.

"Not at thirty-fucking-three, it isn't."

"You have a point there," he concedes, stroking one of my temples inquisitively, almost analytically, mapping the creases forming there with his thumb. I'm not sure he's aware of what he's doing, or that he's doing it so gingerly. Is he being careful with me on purpose, or is this simply what the touch of a ghost feels like - feather-light, fraught, full of things left unsaid? Regardless, I melt into his palm.

"Have you sorted your passport issues yet?" I attempt to crack wise, though it comes out hardly above a coarse whisper.

"Hmm," he muses. "No, not yet. But I suppose I could, if you'd like me to."

I'd only been joking, or at least half-joking, so his unexpected gravitas throws me off balance. "What do you mean?"

He frowns. "What I said. I always mean what I say. Don't you know me at all?" and before I can respond to this, he presses his lips to my forehead and the tiled room collapses, the Eiffel Tower crumbling to dust. I awake with a start, frantically clutching at my chest.

* * *

It's raining. I don't have to look out the window to know; I feel it as an ache in my side, the throb of an old exit wound. Every geriatric relative who ever told me this would happen, I now sympathize with deeply. On the bright side, should I ever long for a career change, I have a dazzling future in meteorology.

I try not to think too much about the dream. It's rare that my sleeping mind takes me to that pocket dimension, the only place where Henry still exists to me, the place where, to me, only Henry still exists. I've been there just twice or thrice before, and we never do much real catching up. Typically, I just let him say cryptic things to me until I wake up. I could listen to his arcanity for hours and not understand a word, but I could listen to it for hours.

Achingly, I rise, brush my teeth, and think instead about the last conversation I'd had with Camilla, years ago. _I love Henry,_ she'd said. _He's dead,_ I'd replied numbly, then. Right now, however, he's as fresh in my mind as if I'd last seen him yesterday. I grasp desperately at the figment of him, trying to hold onto it in my mind, to keep it alive.

But it's too early in the morning to be dwelling so much upon the past, so I pop something (an upper, not too strong) with my French-press coffee, and, without taking breakfast, head to work. The Onassis, the Met library branch housing works on Hellenic and Roman art, handling acquisition, cataloguing, research, publication. It's a small, understaffed branch; I have to be multipurpose.

Most days it's just my supervisor and I, the other researchers and classicists coming and going as needed. She's a severe little Greek woman, Katerina, and I've taken to her as kindly as, if not more than, I once did to Julian, or the professor in Brooklyn, or any number of professors I've substituted for parental figures since. When I walk in, slightly late and damp from the rain, she wordlessly hands me a croissant. I graciously accept.

I spend the better part of the day reshelving periodicals, to make room for a new collection of works on Roman frescoes. It is strange, cathartic, devotional work, moving books that no one ever reads from one room that no one ever visits to another. I feel ever so slightly monklike here, an acolyte in this temple on the Upper East Side. It's also nice to have a task that actually requires some physicality, though it's more taxing than one would expect. The periodicals are heavy lifting, and I'm the youngest person employed here, so reshelving projects tend to fall to me.

Taking a break to catch my breath - after an incident in which a volume on the history of the Corinthian post nearly slips out of my hand and crushes me to death - I languidly browse the stacks. A thin publication catches my eye amidst the rather thick ones, an excerpted and bound journal article entitled "Dreams and Their Interpretations in Ancient Greece." Cautiously, I slide it towards me, and begin to read:

_Wherever we look, the effects of the importance the Greeks attributed to dreams can be seen. A dream for them was a means of being certain of the will of the gods, and an instrument for predicting the future. But we must be careful to avoid thinking that their significance and function were limited to these utilitarian ends. For the Greeks, dreams were also a mysterious revelation of a world unknown to man, and yet just as real as the world in which they lived._

This is not news to me. I think of Achilles and the ghost of Patroclus, who visits him in a dream, not only as a messenger but as a quiet revelation of the underworld's mechanisms. However, when Achilles reaches out for him, all he can grasp is smoke. In my dream - though his touch was light - Henry's hands were as solid as they ever were. I shut the publication quietly and return it to the shelf.

At lunch hour, I visit Katerina at her desk. She looks up from her Caesar salad impassively.

"Hey," I start, the expression on her face telling me already to cut to the chase. "So. Question. Hypothetically, if you were, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, visited by a friend from your past, what would you do?"

"A friend from your past, or a friend who has passed?"

She's sharp. "Yes," I answer simply.

Katerina turns back to her lunch with a shiver, stabbing mercilessly at a crouton. "Would watch my fucking back, is what I would do."

* * *

That night, in my apartment, I put a record on. I drink some wine, make dinner, set out scraps for the alleycat. I trim my hair, quite badly, but it was really getting in my eyes. Then I take a sleeping pill and try to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> et tu, croute?  
> \---  
> chapter 1 of... more than one


	2. Chapter 2

I do dream that night, but not of the tiled room. _Well, that's that, then,_ I think, though not without a pang of dejection.

Instead, I'm standing on the steps of the Sacre-Coeur, in Montmartre. It's winter, but I can tell that it's about to be spring. I catch my reflection in a patch of ice. I can't see my face clearly, but my nose is frostbitten cheerfully, and I'm wrapped in a melange of garishly-colored wools.

As I ascend the steps to the basilica, I sense a shadowy figure looming gradually up the stairs behind me, and dreadfully realize _oh, this is going to be one of those dreams._ I did just rent and watch _Amélie_ alone in my apartment the other night, which I admit makes me objectively pathetic, but which I can't say I expected to result in Audrey Tautou-induced crack nightmares. Nevertheless, I quicken my pace.

At the top of the stairs, I look out over the whole of snowy Paris, in between looks over my shoulder. When I'm fairly certain I've shaken off my shadow, I even take a peek through the little coin-operated binoculars; childishly, I've always wanted to do that.

But I'm mistaken as to my privacy, and a black gloved hand darts out to grab my wrist. I drop my _cinquante centimes_ in alarm. It strikes the pavement with a metallic clatter.

"You're fast," says the shadow, nearly breathless, and I whip around to face it.

" _Jesus_ , Henry, you scared the shit out of me," I breathe; that's the first thing I do. The second is to stare him down, to make sure, once again, that _yes, it's him, really him, he's really here_. The third -

"Whoa, there," comes his gentle reproach, as the force of my arms flung around his neck knocks him stumbling backwards. Then, pressing a hand to the back of my head, he remarks, "You've cut your hair," - he gives it a tousle, and it sticks right out like straw - "just like Rimbaud." 

I don't question how he's gotten here, or why. I just walk with him, and let him talk, and probably I say some things back, I can't recall. I can barely hear myself speak over the sound of blood rushing under my skin. Seeing him here like this, freed from the confines of that strange other room, and now speaking impassionedly about some great work of literature or other without restraint, I'm certain, almost certain that it's really _him_ , or at least a projection of him, and not, say, a distorted memory of him, or a manifestation of my own guilt about what we did. Seeing him here like this, I forgive us for almost everything.

The city seems empty except for us, as if everyone else is at work, or in school, or sleeping peacefully indoors, and we're the only two delinquents at the top of the Sacre-Coeur. I compare us aloud to Antoine and René, _y'know, like in The 400 Blows._  Henry almost smiles at that, then mocks chasing me along the butte, down the steps. I laugh and run ahead after him, playing along, but I'm too reckless, and I take a face-first spill at the bottom. I wake up with a splitting headache.

* * *

After that, I start trying to dream as much as possible. I go to bed early and wake up late. I start hitting the downs hard, the ups even harder. Katerina sees my dark circles every morning and shoots me looks of scathing concern. Eventually, after a month of late arrivals and halfhearted shelving, she stops bringing the extra croissant.

Meanwhile, I'm meeting up with Henry every night, outside Saint Basil's Cathedral, or under the arch of the Rijksmuseum, or in a little yellow café in Hội An. We go everywhere, and everywhere we go, we're alone. Sometimes, we have coffee. Sometimes we have wine. Sometimes I put on a jukebox and we lean into each other, swaying tipsily. Sometimes he chooses the song.

As I get braver, more used to this routine, I start to ask questions, such as "Do you ever run into Bunny?" ( _It doesn't work like that_ ) and "Have you missed Camilla?" ( _Almost as much as I missed you_ \- said sarcastically, I think) and "Are you any happier now?" ( _Again, I repeat - are you?_ ) His answers are enough to mollify, but not to satisfy, not quite.

In order to wake up, I usually have to fall victim to some terrible accident. Most nights, it just happens. Some nights I have to orchestrate it myself. Once or twice, I ask Henry to push me from some impossible height, which is never comfortable for either of us (no strangers to irony are we) but occassionally necessary. As real as they seem, the injuries never accompany me to the waking world, but their side effects often do - cold sweats, mysterious aches, that deep, screaming sensation of a fall.

The Onassis asks me not to show up for a little while. I'm grateful, in spite of their remonstratory tone; _don't they know I have better places to be?_ I sleep longer and more deeply than ever, longer and more deeply every day, until soon I'm only getting out of bed to use the bathroom and to put out scraps for the cat. And when I'm awake, I can never shake the sense of reaching for something just out of my reach, at arm's length yet elusive, a revelation on the tip of the tongue.


	3. Chapter 3

I run out of downs, eventually. I stopped taking the ups a long time ago, around the time I was asked not to return to work. But the sleeping pills are long gone, and so are the benzos, and there are only a few dregs left in my last bottle of wine. I can't sleep without the help anymore, and I need to sleep to dream, so I use my first real moment of lucidity to ring Francis.

He answers on the second tone, of course. "Richard!" he answers cheerily. "My friend, my old chum, my love, the one who got away." Though I'm warmed by his tone and slightly flustered by his candor, I suspect day drinking has had a hand in both.

"Finally invested in caller ID, huh, Francis?"

"Oh! Yes, I did!" he exclaims delightedly. "You should try it, it's wonderful. I mean, I still pick up for everybody, you know, even the unknown numbers. That's one neurosis I'll never eschew. But knowing even marginally what to expect when I pick up has added years to my life, years I'd have lost instead to the mortal terror of the unknown. So, what's up with you?"

"Oh, things are great," I answer distractedly, and then realize I'm not in the mood to play catch up. "Hey, is there any way you could, uh, supply me, with more..."

He suddenly becomes serious. "Ups? Downs?"

"Just downs," I say, a little too forcefully, and I worry that somehow he'll figure out exactly what's going on with me from my tone of voice alone. Not only is he sharp and I paranoid, I've always been afraid that I'm completely transparent to everyone I meet.

We meet in the lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania, me, Francis, and Francis' dealer boyfriend Jack. Jack is tall and smugly debonair, in a Wong Kar-Wai leading-man kind of way, a regular Leslie Cheung. Though they're staying in a Penn Suite together, he and Francis are pretty open about what they are - not just occupationally, but relationship-wise as well. Even Priscilla knows; as it turns out, Priscilla has just as much interest in the opposite sex as Francis does in the fairer one. They have a peaceful and pleasant domestic arrangement during the day, and at night they frequent the same bars. Priscilla's quietude goes over well with other women, Francis tells me. They tend to find it mysterious.

Jack notes that I'm much thinner since I saw the couple last, since our previous deal. "You've been doing cardio?" he jokes, though not without a hint of concern. I've been eating less, and hardly taking care of myself at all lately. I haven't seen the need to, really, since I rarely leave the house anymore. I try to laugh off the fact that it shows.

The transaction runs smoothly, nonetheless. Jack coolly hands off the pills, not drawing attention to himself but also not really caring whether or not security happens to see. I attempt to discreetly slide him the recompense, but probably just end up looking silly, like some misguided kid in an old drug PSA. Francis places both his gloved hands firmly upon my shoulders and says, "Take care of yourself, okay? Use those wisely," then kisses me gravely on the cheek.

* * *

"Waited long?" I ask.

Henry is sitting on the dock of the Mae Klong, wearing a straw hat which, in its incongruity, is endearingly sinister on him, like a lace bonnet tied under the chin of a wolf. "Ages," he says, turning to smirk at me, "but if there's one thing I've got, it's time."

He stands and gestures to a wooden boat roped to a post. I climb in shakily, then hold out my hand to him, which he grabs by the wrist as he unhooks us and begins to row.

The Amphawa floating market is colorful and crowded with shadowy figures I can hardly make out - wisps of grey smoke selling fried fish, hawking flowers, staging animated back-and-forths across the riverbanks in Thai. We float leisurely along it, Henry stopping only to purchase some grilled _pla chon_ (head, tail and all) on a stick for himself, a paper cup of sweet sticky rice for me.

Henry finishes eating before I do, so as I dig into my dessert I let him read aloud to me from the tome he brought in his pocket. "Nachiketa said, there is doubt about a man when he is dead. Some say that he exists; others, that he does not. This I should like to know, taught by you. ..." he begins, and as I listen to the rise and fall of his voice, deep and low, I have to wonder what I'm doing here, in my 30s, out of work, willingly spending nearly all of my time in a state beyond waking, travelling an imaginary globe with my dead friend from college. Shouldn't I have a family by now? Aren't I too old for the things I'm currently throwing myself into headfirst: fantasy, longing, delusion, self-destruction? Yet, as I trace the line of Henry's brow - straight and severe, caught aflame in a ray of golden hour light - down the bridge of his nose - statuesque and furrowed in focus, barred by the wire frame of his glasses, behind which eyes of stone traverse terrains of text - I can little think of anywhere I'd rather be, nor will myself to think of why that is.

He steers us out past the end of the market, where it's quieter. Then he puts the oars aside and settles in, stretching out on his back, hat gingerly placed over his face to shield it from sun. I sit across from him in silence, legs curled against my chest, as far from him as I can possibly be in this tiny vessel. Eventually, he moves the hat aside, just enough to get a look at me, and gestures to the space next to him.

"Come here," he mumbles, "show's about to start."

So I lay myself down next to him, cautiously, so as not to stir up things too badly. And as the evening blooms across the sky in gilded purples and blues, what appear to be hundreds of fireflies rise up from the reeds and take their place upon a stage of twilight.

I don't know for how long we lie there like that. I realize I'm holding onto one of Henry's forearms, clutching it, really, for dear life. He doesn't make any attempt to move it. An insect lands on the tip of my nose and glows there. Henry leans in to blow it away - steadying himself (I assume) with a hand placed on my side. For a minute, we stay there, facing each other. I try and fail to think of something to say.

Then the boat capsizes, and I wake up cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is the next chapter... the last one? is anyone reading this? we shall See
> 
> (book is the upanishads. picked it & the lattimore translation of the odyssey up at a book sale, like a crackhead)


	4. Chapter 4

  
"Richard? It's the middle of the night," Francis mutters blearily on the other end of the call. "Is something wrong?"

 _It's the middle of the night?_ I could have sworn it was morning, but I've lost all track of time lately and - _it is, in fact, the middle of the night,_ I ascertain, pulling back the nearest curtain. "Shit. I'm, shit, Francis, I'm sorry, I didn't realize - "

"Hey, hey, it's alright." His voice softens, and I hear him sit up straighter in bed. "How many times did I do this exact thing to you in college, huh? Whenever I had the sniffles, right?" he laughs quietly. "Just tell your old pal what's going on." Then I hear in the background, more quietly, _is that Richard? What's wrong?_

"Nothing. It's nothing. Tell Jack I'm fine, just," - my voice cracks, mortifyingly - "um, I've been having these dreams?"  
  
Francis listens.

"About Henry."

"Oh."

I'm still shivering violently, from my awakening in the last dream, but I manage to continue shakily. "But I'm starting to think that, like - and I know this sounds insane, but - that maybe they're not just dreams, because when I see him... it's _him_ , you know? It doesn't just look like him, or sound like him, or say the things he would say, it _is_ Henry. And he takes me to all of these places, and we talk about all of these things, and..." I swallow. "And it's like, every night, now. Every day, now, too, because I lost my job a while ago, I think?"

"Jesus, Richard."

"- and now all I do is sleep, so I can see him. I have to see him, because when I don't, I feel like something's been ripped out of my chest, like, what if the last time I saw him could be the _last_ time, you know? And when I do see him, something terrible always happens to me, right before I wake up, like my brain knows he shouldn't be there and force-quits." I inhale for the first time in a while. "I'm hardly eating, and I almost never leave the house anymore. Sometimes I even forget to put out food for the cat."

"Meatball's fine, Richard. He's a city cat-"

"And I'm afraid to stray too far in any one direction from my bed, because what if I cross some kind of threshold, or do something wrong, and he stops coming to see me?" I choke out, my voice sounding strangled. " _Henry_ , I mean, not Meatball. It'd be like killing him all over again," Then I become embarrassingly quiet, for what feels like a long, long time. "I'm sorry, Francis, I just - "

I hear rustling on Francis' end. He gets up, walks a few feet, shuts and locks a door behind him. Then he sighs, long and weary.

"You know, I've always thought that if you weren't so hung up on Henry, you and I would have slept together by now," he laments.

I think he's trying to lighten the mood, but I'm too baffled by what he's suggesting to go along with it. "Huh?"

"Richard," he says laughingly, as if I'm playing dumb. Then he must realize that _oh, he's actually that dumb_ , because then he says, " _Richard_. Come on."

I replay the past couple months of dreams in my head, thinking about every tender look and lingering touch and how I've taken extra care to record them all to memory. I think even further back to when Henry was alive, to him in his gardening clothes bringing me plants for the dorm, dirt clinging to his undershirt, or him lifting me out of that freezing cabin in the dead of winter, him staying at my bedside every day in the hospital, reading somberly to himself, and how I'd hoped to be sick just a little while longer so we could stay there just like that. I think back, back to the very first time I saw him on campus, how I'd first noticed his ascetic grace and been mesmerized, and -

"Ah," I utter.

"See," Francis says gently. "You know."

I let that sink in. Then I swallow again, harder this time. "And... do you think Henry..."

"Feels the same? Do I think Henry feels anything, period, besides a deep-seated and incredibly troubling pathological lust for Homer? That's a question, for sure." He lowers his voice. "But yes, if Henry is capable of loving anyone, I think he certainly does love you. He made a big show of feeling for Camilla, sure, with all of -" I can hear him gesture wildly with his hands through the phone. "- that. But I saw the way he used to look at you. In fact, ask him what he whispered to her before he, you know - if it wasn't something about you, I'll eat my finest hat. Besides, you know how it was with the Ancient Greeks. I'm surprised he hasn't tried to kiss you yet and call it _philia_ \- "

"So you don't think I'm crazy?"

" _No_ , dipshit. I think you're _haunted_. I'd tell you to sage your apartment, but you're in love with the fucking ghost."

* * *

The next time I dream, I find myself in a little windowless motel lobby. I can't make out its location on Earth - I'm surrounded on all sides by floral wallpaper and wood paneling - but something in its affectation suggests a faux-Alpine chalet. There's a neon sign in the window shouting something in a language I can't read, and a key in my hand with no number. It's drafty. No one is at the front desk. I feel a chill behind my ears; my hair is still damp. 

I ascend the carpeted stairs, breathlessly, though not for lack of stamina. There's only one room. I turn the key in the lock.

"Took you long enough," Henry says, seated on the end of the starched, turned-down double bed, a thin book in one hand. He waves me over. "Here, come here. You've studied some French. Help me with this line."

"Henry." I approach him. The room is small; I cross it in about two and a half steps. I feel claustrophobic, especially in standing while Henry sits. This is the first time I've ever felt him to be smaller than me. It's also possibly the first time I've ever seen the top of his head. A pang of fondness flashes through me like a bullet - like  _the_ bullet - as I stare into the dark whorl that greets me there. 

He points to the page in front of him. "See, after _l_ _e prince était le Génie, le Génie était le Prince_ _,_ the line  _la musique savante manque à notre désir._ I have a general sense of the meaning, but what -" 

" _Henry._ "

He looks up, startled. I notice now that his glasses have been perched aslant on his nose this whole time. I think about reaching out to fix them, but I'm frozen to the spot, and my palms are slightly clammy, anyway. "Yes?"

I remember to breathe, but forget to speak. An expression of worry flecked with impatience crosses Henry's brow. "Richard, what is it? You have my attention."

"What was it you said to Camilla that day?"

"What?"

"You know," I intone. 

Henry smiles wrily. "Oh, so  _now_ you want to know?" he teases. "Come on, you mean you never asked her yourself?"

I just stare at him, until the playful, shiteating look on his face cracks and gives way to something genuine but harder to read. 

"Come on. You asked her," he insists. "You know, right? Richard? You know."

I gaze at my feet, now. The motel carpet gazes back, mossy and coarse.

I can't see his face, but I can see him wringing his hands. "You don't know? You don't know. Okay. That's - okay, then, if you don't know, you're here because..."

"Henry, just tell me," I say, weakly, feeling exceptionally tired for a sleeping man.

I hear a swallow. "Alright," he says, and I cautiously look up at him again. His usually-smug countance has been transformed with hesitation and nerves into something resembling - something that actually, I truly can't recognize, but something, if I had to guess, almost akin to heartsickness? "Alright," he says again. "That day, I told Camilla - "

But before he can tell me the secret, I take the crooked frames from his face and, leaning down, blot it out with mine. So I suppose I'll never know. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sike! you thought you'd seen the last of me  
> thank you so much to everyone who's been reading, it means a lot lol...
> 
>  
> 
> line is from illuminations, rimbaud (conte) because of course it is


	5. Chapter 5

I can’t remember the last time I got out of bed. I don’t have to try, when I’ve already been all over the world — or rather, I should say, we. 

Our excursions in dreams become increasingly obscure. We huddle together in unmarked alleyways, in lonesome mountaintop inns, in wide, empty fields, where only the faintest whiff of Eastern European street food or the strum of an indigenous instrument or the prattle of American livestock can clue me in to where the hell we are. The country rarely matters, though, anymore. Sometimes, it escapes my detection completely. Sometimes, all I see are hands, frantic gloved hands, pulling at lapels, shoving against bricks or down into grass. Sometimes, all I see is Henry. Sometimes, I think the country might be Henry.  

One morning, I wake up ready to go back to sleep. I reach for a handful of pills, but my hand comes up against something other than the usual empty space; a looming, breathing, t-shirted form, tangled up in sheets. He groans, languidly, reaching for the spot on the broad of his back where I’ve struck him, and rolls over to face me. 

“Do you _mind_?” Henry asks.

I blink. In fact, there is nothing I can do but blink.

Henry’s injured facade falls away, as he puts up a politely worried one instead. “Really though,” he asks, “ _do_ you mind? I mean, you don’t mind, do you? This?”

I blink some more. “What, that you’re—  that you’re…”

“That I’m?” he repeats. 

“Here?”

“Yes, that I’m here.”

“No, I mean,” I scramble, “you’re here? You _are_ here?”

He looks down at himself, pats himself on the chest, pretends to check the pulse in both his wrists. “Well, I certainly don’t seem to be anywhere else.”

I think about reaching for the phone handset, which is behind me, somewhere on the floor. I think about calling Francis, telling him — um, telling him what, I’m not sure, though I suppose anything I could tell him would have to be prefaced with _you’re not going to believe this._ But I’m afraid that this, whatever this is, will end the moment I look away. For these reasons (and these reasons, I choose to believe, alone), I keep Henry firmly in my line of sight. 

“So, do you mind?” he asks again. There is a quaver in his voice that makes me wonder if maybe his nerves are not a pretense, after all. 

I had almost forgotten that there was a question to answer. "No, it's fine, I just, I - " I falter. "Um, I don't have anywhere for you to sleep."

It’s Henry’s turn to blink. “Richard,” he says slowly. “We’ve shared a hotel bed on every habitable continent on Earth.”

This is true. Still, for good reason, I’m not sure what qualifies as reality in this situation yet, let alone what the etiquette is for letting the spectre of your dead ex-best-friend-now-lover-in-a-series-of-transcontinental-dreams come to visit-slash-haunt your real-life, waking-world, New York City studio apartment. I’m not sure that even Emily Post thought this far ahead, or that even e.e. cummings ever used this many hyphens.

"What, Richard?” he asks, feigning injury at my hesitant silence. “Afraid I'm going to hog the blankets? I can assure you, that's not even possible," and he puts his hand through the headboard to prove it, his wrist disappearing effortlessly into the grain of the wood.

To test a variety of things, I cup a hand to his cheek. Physically, he’s not a day older than he was the last time I saw him, on this side of the realm, anyway - though he has the world-weariness of someone much older and sager than I. Meanwhile, the brain I’ve spent years trying to melt into a puddle with various substances is encased in wrinkles and a hairline that is (rather rudely!) beginning to recede. "You feel solid enough to me," I say.

He laughs. "Well, maybe I _am_ solid enough to you," he says, and slides his hand between mine and his cheek, pressing the tips of all five of my fingers together in his. 

We lie there like that for a few minutes: him gripping my hand like a vice, me wondering what it says about me that I'm the only thing in this world he has any influence over at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i grow old, i grow old, i shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, etc.   
> enjoy bbs


End file.
